No one could surpass Julio in the quick slap and the ready card.

His father heard with a heavy heart the news brought him by some friends thinking to flatter his vanity--his son was always victorious in these gentlemanly encounters; he it was who always scratched the enemy's skin.

The painter knew more about fencing than art.

He was a champion with various weapons; he could box, and was even skilled in the favorite blows of the prize fighters of the slums.
"Useless as a drone, and as dangerous, too," fretted his father.

And yet in the back of his troubled mind fluttered an irresistible satisfaction--an animal pride in the thought that this hare-brained terror was his own.
For a while, he thought that he had hit upon a way of withdrawing his son from such an existence.